OPERA REVIEW: DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES


Pictured: Judith Forst

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
09 MAY 2013
R: 5/5

TORONTO - It has been said — quite correctly, too — that, while a journeyman carver can impose his will on a piece of marble, only a true artist can coax from that marble the art that already dwells inside it . Which suggests if Toronto-born artist Robert Carsen had chosen marble instead of music and flesh as his medium, he might have given Michelangelo a run.

For proof, consider Carsen’s superb production of Francis Poulenc’s DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES, currently playing at the Four Seasons Centre — a production initially created for Nederlandse Opera that fits the Canadian Opera Company stage to perfection while showcasing some of Canada’s finest operatic talent in the process.

Even in opera, DIALOGUES is emotional heavy lifting, recounting the story of a group of nuns caught up in the French revolution who choose to go, one by one, to the guillotine rather than subvert their faith to the will of the mob. But in melding a high-powered cast that teams the venerable and vital mezzo Judith Forst with talents like sopranos Isabel Bayrakdarian, Adrianne Pieczonka, Hélène Guilmette and Megan Latham and sets them down in the midst of the elegantly spare design vision of Michael Levine (sets), Falk Bauer (costumes) and Jean Kalman (whose lighting design is recreated by Cor Van Den Brink), Carsen creates operatic magic. This is a work of such simple, soaring beauty that one suspects Poulenc has rarely been better served.

And while it remains a musically challenging piece, for the most part, that challenge is more than met by the COC Orchestra under conductor Johannes Debus, although at times, that orchestra and the cast seemed — uncharacteristically — to be working in competition instead of collaboration.

In terms of staging, Carsen and Levine use a simple box, and with the help of a cast of thousands (OK, a cast of dozens, but dozens used to maximum effect) turn it into something worthy of Pandora, a box from which the evil of excess springs as looming revolution sweeps inexorably back and forth across the stage, until eventually, it invades the peaceful and reflective life of the convent in which the Carmélites serve in prayer and meditation. From its very opening scene, this is a production filled not only with the claustrophobia of imminent disaster, but with the kind of quiet peace that disaster can so easily overwhelm.

Finally, in an ending that, in terms of sheer horror, teeters on the edge of excess, Carsen teams simple sound with the choreography of Philippe Giraudeau — which proves far more effective than the most gory of special effects. Because, in the end, the genius of a great director is measured not in what is brought to an opera in the way of clever concepts and over-worked staging, but rather by what is brought out in an opera, by simply getting inside the story and the music and working with it. And here, Carsen establishes his greatness.